convict fry

as alot of people say, convicts are the rabbits of cichlids. they will breed like crazy in almost any conditions. my 75 gal is 48" long 18"deep and 21" tall and my convicts held 3 feet down for the fry keeping my 8 inch(at tha time) oscar and 9 other cichlids in a 1 ft my 1.5 ft square in the corner of my tank. when i put my hand in the tank the parents would attack my hand because i let them have the fry, i dont like stripping them. they started with 60-70 fry and about 15 died within the first month which wasn't bad but not many died after that. they grew surprisingly fast mainly because they were in a 75 gal with more room. when they were about 3/4" i had to move and only lost 1 but after that i got tired of the parents terrorizing my other fish and sold the mom and fry to my room mate who i also sold my old 29 gal to.

i used to have oscars, and got some convicts to breed my own feeders, and after about a year or so they turned into a nusance, i kept finding literally hundreds of 1/4" long fish in my overflows.... i had 6 breeding pairs at one time for a while, and after a couple HUGE groups of fry, which the oscars had absolutly no intrest in eating, i got fed up with catching them and giving them away. im now 100% convict free and couldnt be happier lol. i will say however had a pair of convicts will provide tons of entertainment in the proper setting when you can observe their parenting

they are great for experience in breeding cichlids. i kept the male because im still a fan of convicts. he recently started showing his horn

i had a couple albino males that grew a big knob on their head kinda like a flowerhorn. it was pretty wierd bc neither of the parents had that feature. i only saw it on my albinos.

i used to have 2 males and a female black convict and i got one pair while the other male was being terrorized by the pair and would hide under a rock for a couple months. but because he was having to compete with another male that was bigger and stronger he sat under that rock and got beefy and grew his horn. then one day he came out of his hole and ended up taking the female away from the dominant male. convicts will become extremely aggressive once they're fully matured and have grown their horn just like flowerhorns and green terrors